Jagadis Chandra Bose

“ And in this country through milleniums, there always have been some who, beyond the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, sought for the realisation of the highest ideal of life—not through passive renunciation, but through active struggle. The weakling who has refused the conflict, having acquired nothing has nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won, can enrich the world by giving away the fruits of his victorious experience. In India such examples of constant realisation of ideals through work have resulted in the formation of a continuous living tradition. ”

“ Bose:—
It is the obvious, the insistent, the blatant that often blinds us to the essential. And in solving the mystery that underlies life, the enlightenment will come not by the study of the complex man, but through the simpler plant. It is the unsuspected forces, hidden to the eyes of men,—the forces imprisoned in the soil and the stimuli of alternating flash of light and the gloomings of darkness these and many others will be found to maintain the ceaseless activity which we know as the fulness of throbbing life. ”

“ Bose had the strongest confidence that India would soon see a revival of those glorious traditions. There will soon rise a Temple of Learning where the teacher cut off from worldly distractions would go on with his ceaseless pursuit after truth, and dying, hand on his work to his disciples. Nothing would seem laborious in his inquiry; never is he to lose sight of his quest, never is he to let it go obscured by any terrestrial temptation. For he is the Sanyasin spirit, and India is the only country where so far from there being a conflict between science and religion. ”

“ And this is why, though my own life has been given to the pursuit of science, I had yet no hesitation in accepting the honour of your invitation.
POETRY AND SCIENCE
The poet, seeing by the heart, realises the inexpressible and strived to give it expression. His imagination soars, where the sight of others fails, and his news of realm unknown finds voice in rhyme and metre. The path of the scientific man may be different, yet there is some likeness between the two pursuits. Where visible light ends, he still follows the invisible. ”

“ Neglect of these essentials of national duty will imperil her very existence; and sufficient stimulus for these will be found in success and satisfaction of personal ambition.
But these alone do not ensure the life of a nation. Such material activities have brought in the West their fruit, in accession of power and wealth. There has been a feverish rush even in the realm of science, for exploiting applications of knowledge, not so often for saving as for destruction. In the absence of some power of restraint, civilisation is trembling in an unstable poise on the brink of ruin. ”

“ Through science I was able to teach you how the seeming veils the real; how though the garish lights dazzle and blind us, there are lights invisible, which glow persistently after the brief flare burns out. One came to realise how all matter was one, how unified all life was. In the various expressions of life even in the realm of thought the same Universal law prevails. There was no such thing as brute matter, but that spirit suffused matter in which it was enshrined. ”

“ After many centuries the East and West had met once more, and it would be the test of the real greatness of the two civilisations that both should be finer and better for the shock of contact. The apparent dormancy of intellectual life in India had been only a temporary phase. Just like the oscillations of the seasons found the globe, great pulsations of intellectual activity pass over the different peoples of the earth. ”

“ I think that all the machinery to improve the higher education in India would be altogether ineffectual unless India enters the world [Pg_129] movement for the advancement of knowledge. And for this it is absolutely necessary to touch the imagination of the people so as to rouse them to give their best energies to the work of research and discovery, in which all the nations of the world are now engaged. To aim at anything less will only end in a lifeless and mechanical system from which the soul of reality has passed away. ”

“ Can anything appeal more to the imagination than the fact that we can detect the peculiarities in the internal molecular structure of an opaque body by means of light that is itself invisible? Could anything have been more unexpected than to find that a sphere of China-clay focuses invisible light more perfectly than a sphere of glass focuses the visible; that in fact, the refractive power of this clay to electric radiation is at least as great as that of the most costly diamond to light? ”

“ The greatest wealth of external appliances is of no avail, where there is not a concentrated pursuit, utterly detached from personal gain. Those whose minds rush hither and thither, those who hunger for public applause instead of truth itself, by them the quest is not won. To those on the other hand, who do long for knowledge itself, the want of favourable conditions does not seem the principle obstacle.
In the first place, we have to realise that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is our aim, and that the world's common standard of utility have no place in it. ”

“ From amongst the innumerable octaves of light, there is only one octave, with power to excite the human eye. In reality, we stand, in the midst of a luminous ocean, almost blind! The little that we can see is nothing, compared to the vastness of [Pg_084] that which we cannot. But it may be said that out of the very imperfection of his senses man has been able, in science, to build for himself a raft of thought by which to make daring adventure on the great seas of the unknown. ”

“ What is the difference between the living and the dead? The living answers to a shock from without; the most lively gives the most energetic, the torpid or dying the feeblest, and the dead no answer at all. Thus life may be tested by shocks from without, the size of the answer being the gauge of vitality. The answer of the strong will be violent and almost explosive in its intensity, while the weakling will barely protest. The responsive movements may be recorded by suitable apparatus. ”

“ The life of the plant became pliant at the will of the experimenter, and nothing appeared more marvellous than the realisation that man has the power to pierce the veil that shrouds the mystery that had hitherto baffled him. ”

“ One also realised dimly a mysterious Cyclic Law of Change, seen not merely in inorganic matter but also in organised life and its highest manifestations. One saw how inertness passes into the climax of activity and how that climax is perilously near its antithetic decline. This basic change puzzles us by its seeming caprice not merely in our physical instruments but also in the cycle of individual life and death and in the great cycle of the life and death of nations. We fail to see things in their totality and we erect barriers that keep kindreds apart. ”

“ But from the time the Sikh and the Pathan, the Gurkha and the Bengali, the Mahratta and the Rajput flung themselves in front of battle from that day our perception has become intensified. The distant cry of those whose life-blood has crimsoned the white field of snow, has found reverberating echo in our heart. What is that subtle bond by which all distances are bridged over, and by which an individual life becomes merged in larger life? ”

“ Which is more potent, Matter or Spirit? Is the power with which the people endow their king identical with the power of wealth with which we enrich him by paying him his Royal dues? We make him irresistible not by wealth but by [Pg_191] the strength of our lives, the strength of our mind, may, we have to pay him more according to our ancient Lawgivers, in as much as the eighth part of our deeds and virtues, and the merit we have ourselves acquired. We can only make him irresistible by the strength of our lives, the strength of our minds, and the strength that comes out of righteousness. ”

“ You are aware that in this West, the prevailing tendency at the moment is, after a period of synthesis, to return upon the excessive sub-division of learning. The result of this specialisation is rather to accentuate the distinctiveness of the various sciences, so that for a while the great unity of all tends perhaps to be obscured. Such a caste system in scholarship, undoubtedly helps at first, in the gathering and classification of new material. But if followed too exclusively, it ends by limiting the comprehensiveness of truth. The search is endless. Realisation evades us. ”

“ How are we to know what unseen changes take place within the plant? If it be excited or depressed by some special circumstance, how are we, on the outside, to be made aware of this? The only conceivable way would be, if that were possible, to detect and measure the actual response of the organism to a definite external blow. When an animal receives an external shock it may answer in various ways if it has voice, by a cry; if it be dumb, by the movement of its limbs. ”

“ Can anything small or circumscribed ever satisfy the mind of India? Has her own history and the teaching of the past prepared her for some temporary and quite subordinate gain? There are at this moment two complementary and not antagonistic ideals before the country. India is drawn into the vortex of international competition. She has to become efficient in every way,—through spread of education, through performance of civic duties and responsibilities, through activities both industrial and commercial. ”

“ In this great communion of learning, this is not the first time that a scientific man has officiated as priest. The chair which I now occupy has already been held by one whom I love and honour as friend and colleague, and glory in our countryman, Praphulla Chandra Ray. In honouring him, your Society has not only done homage to merit, but has also placed before our people a lofty and inclusive ideal of literature. ”

“ Any idea that the educational system of India was so far inferior to that of England, that Indians, who had made their mark, had done so, not because of the educational system of the country, but in spite of it, was quite unfounded. The standard of education prevailing in India was quite up to the mark of several British universities. It was as true of any other country in the world as of India that education was valued as a means for passing examinations, and not only for itself, and there was no more cramming in India than elsewhere. ”

“ Now by the data of the influence of drugs on the fundamental basis of life, as is seen in the plant, we shall be able to make the science of medicine purely scientific.
In travelling all over the world, which I have done several times, I was struck by two great characteristics of different nations. One characteristic of certain nations is living for the future. All the modern nations are striving to win force and power from nature. There is another class of men who live on the glory of the past. ”

“ We shall be at one with it in feeling the common surgings of life, the common love for the good, the true and the beautiful. In this Institute, this Study and Garden of Life, the claim of art has not been forgotten, for the artist has been working with us, from foundation to pinnacle, and from floor to ceiling of this very Hall. And beyond that arch the Laboratory merges imperceptibly into the garden, which is the true laboratory for the study of Life. ”

“ Thus the whole of the vegetable world, including rigid trees perceive the changes in their environment and respond to them by unmistakable signals. They thrill under light and become depressed by darkness; the warmth of summer and frost of winter, drought and rain, these and many other happenings leave a subtle impression on the life of the plant. By invention of apparatus of extreme delicacy, it is possible to make the plant itself write down the history of its own experience in a hieroglyphic which it is possible to decipher. ”

“ The problems of vegetable life are, it must be said, extremely obscure, and for the penetrating [Pg_085] of that darkness we have long had to wait for instruments of a superlative sensitiveness. This has been the principal reason for our long clinging to mere theory, instead of looking for the demonstration of facts. But to learn the truth we have to put aside theories, and rely only on direct experiment. We have to abandon all our preconceptions, and put our questions direct, insisting that the only evidence we can accept is that which bears the plant's own signature. ”

“ LIVING AND NON-LIVING
In the pursuit of my investigations I was unconsciously led into the border region of physics and physiology and was amazed to find boundary lines vanishing and points of contact emerge between the realms of the Living and Non-living. Inorganic matter was found anything but inert; it also was a thrill under the action of multitudinous forces that played on it. A universal reaction seemed to bring together metal, plant and animal under a common law. ”

“ Bose would have earned an enduring reputation in the annals of science. We know very little about paralysis in the human body, and practically nothing about its cause. The nervous system of the higher animals is so complicated, so intricate, that it is hard to understand its derangement. The human nerve dies when isolated. It is killed by the shock of removal, and responds for the moment abnormally and therefore deceptively. But, if we study the simplest kind of a nerve,—and the simplest is that of a plant,—we may hope to understand what occurs when a hand or a foot cannot be made to move. ”

“ In tracing the characteristic phenomenon of life from simple beginnings in that vast region which may be called unvoiced, as exemplified in the world of plants, to its highest expression in the animal kingdom, one is repeatedly struck by the one dominant fact that in order to maintain an organism at the height of its efficiency something more than a mechanical perfection of its structure is necessary. Every living organism, in order to maintain its life and growth, must be in free communion with all the forces of the Universe about it. ”